Brief Bio:

 I am a Senior at the University of Pittsburgh, and a History major. I am originally from New York, and the Coroner's Project is an excellent way for me to familiarize myself with the city that I have called home for nearly the past decade. This is my first experience archiving, and hopefully I will develop some useful skills over the next few months.

Working Notes:

 I am still getting accustomed to this whole process, and need to become more acquainted with the project's veterans. I have already begun to notice certain trends in the files that are constant reminders of Pittsburgh's historically industrial background. For example, many laborers are involved in steel mill or railroad accidents, and many people commit suicide by jumping off of bridges. There was even one suicide where a laborer hung himself inside a boxcar by a length of chain after his shift had ended. The number of work-related deaths seems quite high in this town, but I have only been around for a couple weeks, so appearances might change a bit.

We are currently working on a set of files from the late 1800s, and it is much slower moving because some of the pages are disintegrating simply from being touched for the first time in over a hundred years. Very little of the text in these files is typed, which makes deciphering them a painful process at times. I have noticed that about 90% of the case files involve males, and when a woman appears, her demise is often a result of some house-related accident, such as being burned by an exploding oil lamp, or accidentally ingesting a poisonous cleaning product. Some serious racial striation is also evident in the language of the text, and I feel that is one of the unique (but not surprising) features of this period. I am certain other interns have mentioned this as well, but being struck by a train is the coronary occlusion of the 1800's, there are simply hundreds of cases of railroad accidents. Many of us are shocked by how often and easily people seem to be hit by trains, but I assume that there was a lot more track in use at that time, and it is likely that the railroad crossing warning systems were a bit underdeveloped. The railroad companies seem to avoid responsibility for these deaths when they can, there was even an Engineer that was struck and killed while in the train yard where he was employed, and the report released by the company said that he was 'trespassing'. How can you be a trespasser at your place of employment?